Why Was There a Lizard on My Idaho Primary Ballot?

While most of the world fiercely defended whether or not they heard the word "Laurel" or "Yanny" in the audio clip going viral thanks to Reddit, I was on a quest to find out why there was a picture of a lizard staring at me on my primary ballot. It seemed so strange that once I was done voting on the back of my ballot, I flipped back to the front just to make sure that I saw it correctly. Yup, definitely a lizard. I voted on a republican ballot and I know that this little guy isn't the party's mascot, so why was he there?

When a Google search failed to provide me with any closure, I ended up posting about it on Facebook just to make sure I wasn't seeing things! That's where one of our superstar listeners swooped in and explained what the lizard was. Michelle E. works for the company who printed the Ada County ballots for this year's primary and spent hours inspecting the ballots before they were delivered to the polls. She saw a lot of the little, slimy guys because they were a watermark verifying that they were an official Ada County ballot.

The watermarks on the ballot change every election, so you'll probably see something different during the general election in November. And for the record, it wasn't a lizard at all. It was Idaho's State Amphibian, the Idaho Giant Salamander.